Tony Trimingham with a picture of his son, Damien. who he lost to a drug overdose.Source:News Corp Australia

WHEN Damien Trimingham was 22 years old, he died from a heroin overdose.

He wasn’t a long-term heroin user, nor was he aimless, unintelligent, unpopular, unambitious, or any other stereotype you might associate with drug users.

“When Damien got into heroin and drugs we were living on Sydney’s North Shore,” explains his father, Tony. “He went to Chatswood High School, he was a high achiever, and an excellent sports person — he played football, went to state athletics, was house captain, a prefect, and generally very well regarded. He was the sort of person you’d expect to do really well in life. He was reasonably settled, he had a girlfriend, lots of friends, and it was the last thing I ever expected. When he told me I got the shock of my life.”

Mr Trimingham reacted “as a lot of fathers do” by trying to fix the situation. He sent Damien to be with his sister on the Blue Mountains “for a cold turkey detox.”

“The next 12 months were very up and down, but he got a new girlfriend, he started bushwalking … we didn’t realise that we hadn’t solved it all, it’s a very complicated issue. At some moments it was very positive but he had very black moments, and he started drinking a lot.

“The day he died, he went shopping with his girlfriend in the morning, and they’d called in at the local pub on their way home. They had an argument, she left, he started drinking, he got some money out of the ATM, he caught the train into Taylor Square, he shot up at 10.15pm. It was what they call the trifecta — he hadn’t been using so his tolerance had dropped, he’d been drinking, and he went to an isolated place. A security guard on patrol saw Damien sitting there and had to call for another guard as per their protocol, by which time he had slumped forward and it was already too late.”

Tony has since set up Family Drug Support, to assist others in similar situations.

Damien Trimingham as a 15 year old.

With such a traumatic story, you could understand Mr Trimingham being unsympathetic towards the fate of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, two members of the Bali 9 who could face execution this week. They were arrested in Bali on April 17 2005 for attempting to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia, and have been sentenced to death by firing squad. Their final presidential clemency plea was rejected last week.

But Mr Trimingham is far from being in agreement with their execution — in fact, he believes the two men are genuinely remorseful, and that rather than being put to death, they could be rehabilitated back into the community, and used to warn people of the dangers of drugs in every capacity.

“When I heard about the Bali 9 all those years ago, I was very distressed that they’d done it, but I could see that in a way they were just like my son — they were stupid, they were young, they were doing something they hadn’t thought about too much,” he explains.

“One of my first reactions after Damien died was to get angry and want to ‘get’ the drug dealers, but I quickly realised that venting my anger on them was the wrong area. I want to change the system and the attitude to drugs, I’d rather focus on education.

“I don’t think [Chan and Sukumaran] should get away scott free, but they aren’t. They’ve already served their time. I would have been anti-death penalty even if these men hadn’t been remorseful, but it’s been quite a number of years now, they’ve matured, they have a different attitude to life. With maturity things change, we see that with drug users themselves — with time, they get different priorities. I’ve built up a friendship with Lee and Christine Rush, the parents of Scott Rush, over the years, I’ve done some presentations for them at their drug awareness events, why can’t we use them to do the same?

Andrew Chan, now 31, and Myuran Sukumaran, now 33, inside the workshop of Kerobokan jail in Bali.

“The more I know the more I realise that the worst thing that could happen is their execution. It’s terrible to think that now they are facing the death penalty. Their families will go through everything I did, and for what? What good would it do? It doesn’t change the fact that people use drugs, it doesn’t change the fact that people will continue import drugs.

“The families are the innocent people. They love their kids just like we love our drug-using kids, but you’re just a bystander in this. I have sympathy for the young men, and the reality of what these families have gone through over the past ten years, what they’re going through now, it’s heartbreaking.”

“I know that there are a lot of people on board that don’t believe that they should be taken away and shot, and then there is still going to be an element of people that do. But I just ask those people to maybe put the shoe on the other foot and think that they were young kids, stupid kids that made a stupid mistake that have showed over the last 10 years they have changed and reformed themselves,” Andrew’s brother Michael Chan said.

“If being in prison is to reform yourself I think both the boys have done that and what’s asked of them. I don’t expect him to come home tomorrow, they both have done a crime and they both should pay for it but not with their lives.”

Myuran Sukumaran’s mother Raji, who has just arrived in Bali, told reporters that “no mother should have to go through this.”

“He is breaking into pieces and there is nothing I can do to help him and something has to be done and they should not be executed. Please help, please do something, no one should be in this position. No mother should have to go through this. It is killing us,” she said.

The man who is behind the #keephopealive mercy campaign to save Chan and Sukumaran, Matius Arif, said on Sunday that “Indeed, many prisoners were not successful in learning deterrence in prison. But they are. So, do not kill them. They should give testimony about their life to make people aware about the danger of narcotics.

“Death row issue is not only an Australian issue. It’s definitely an Indonesian issue. And how we respond on this is very important,” he said.

“I’ve got no doubt that our government is doing everything they can diplomatically, but I wonder if it should go beyond that,” says Mr Trimingham. “I understand we should respect the Indonesian government, but this is barbaric. It’s something we abandoned al long time ago, and it’s time we put other pressures on Indonesia. We give them a lot of foreign aid, we help them a lot, but by just allowing it to happened, we’re just sitting idle.

“Damien has been dead 18 years next month. The pain has changed. It comes in waves, it’s very difficult. But especially it being a drug related death, it’s difficult because you know that the death’s preventable. This is the parallel with the Bali boys — people don’t have to die from heroin overdose, and they don’t have to die either. It’s a wasted, pointless death.”

If you or someone you know are struggling with alcohol and other drugs, call the Family Drug Service on 1300368186 or visit www.fds.org.au/